Friday, 25 March 2016

Over the years I’ve seen many changes in learning in the realm of cartography. I’m going to use this blog post to reflect on those changes and offer some thoughts on the current state of education in cartography as I see it or, more specifically, how it's become monopolized by people with very little cartographic education of their own to speak of.

Many of us in the geo or cartography business, whatever we
do, can point to a love of maps in our school-age years. Struggling for
motivation to do something else, I took my own love of maps to what I saw as a
more serious step by taking a formal qualification when I studied it for a
Bachelor’s degree. I had in mind that I wanted to be involved with maps as a
career of some sort and getting an education in them was a key component to
becoming proficient and, well, qualified!

My degree course was a very vocationally designed course
because it had served as an entry point to the UK cartographic industry for
decades. A lot of it was practical but the practical techniques were nothing
without the theoretical and conceptual understanding we were taught alongside.
Of course, history now shows that many of the techniques I learnt (scribing,
photo-mechanical production etc) are long gone and if truth were told, the
course was probably lagging behind the technology at the time as computers were
replacing many functions of the cartographic process. This is a fairly typical
scenario as University courses still struggle to keep pace with the rapid
evolution of technology.

As I graduated, the UK cartographic industry was rapidly
shrinking as GIS exploded onto the landscape. But while the technology has
changed profoundly, many of those key ideas, concepts, theories and abilities
to critically evaluate have changed very little. The technical and practical
aspects were quite honestly the most trivial aspect of my degree. It was the
thinking and the development of a cartographic mind that was the most important
aspect. Of course, at the time we though just making a decent looking map would
get us a good grade. Often that was the case but rarely did we really
appreciate that our tutors were actually grading what was going on behind the
map…not what the end product looked like. I used to use a pen and scribing
tool. I have coded maps before and now I work with servers and portals and
other ‘stuff’….increasing animations and 3D. Anyway, the point is, we can
easily pick up new ways of doing but picking up the thinking behind the doing
isn’t a trivial learning task.

So I loved maps and wanted to better understand them and how
they were made. But more than that – I wanted to prepare myself for entering
the workforce doing something I loved. And in deciding upon that, the logical
step is to do your research and find out where and who is going to give you the
best education. I was going to go to Swansea University to do their Topographic
Science degree but I ended up going to Oxford Polytechnic. Like most people
looking for higher education, University was a logical step. I wanted to learn
from the best; people who had been there and done it and who had their own
qualifications as badges of authority and experience in cartography. My tutors
were internationally known and contributed to cartography in academic and
industrial settings. I went to arguably the top place for budding cartographers
because I wanted a high quality education and to join the pantheon of
cartographers who could point to their alma mater as a badge of quality. The
best I could get from masters in the area to set my career up in the best way I
could.

As I entered an academic career I soon began learning how to
teach and how to be a researcher. Pedagogy became a very important component of
my professional life. I had learnt domain knowledge during my degree studies
and the mindset of lifelong learning means that I still learn every day. I had
practical ability yet the practice of cartography was already rapidly changing
and I never used photomechanical production techniques in a real workplace. As
an academic I probably wasn’t as practiced as I could have been (a common
accusation of teachers generally) but the skills and techniques of being able
to teach and lecture were vitally important. I took courses in pedagogic theory
and various diplomas. Over the next 20 or so years the process of lifelong
learning you acquire as a professional academic meant I kept abreast of current
thinking to inform my domain knowledge, my practical abilities and changes in
pedagogy. You never become a finished article either in domain knowledge or the
ability to teach but knowing how to question and, importantly, to find out the
bits you don’t know is important. You also learn an awful lot about people and
how to help, encourage or push people to achieve their own goals. Teaching has
its very own set of vitally important skills over and above the content.

So where’s this going?

Ultimately, I left academia because I was tired of the admin
and bureaucracy. I really enjoyed teaching my students and helping them realize
their own passion in mapping. Sometimes I’d lose some along the way because
they actually weren’t that interested. Some now have very successful careers in
geo and that makes me proud. Some teach…some teach cartography. I stay in touch
with many of them. During my academic life I went to many conferences and I
could be absolutely certain each would have a panel or a discussion on
pedagogic approaches to teaching geography/cartography/GIS/whatever. The format
was largely the same. Often it was the same people. The outcomes were normally
the same…largely boring summaries of the need for more…better…free…blah blah
blah yackity schmackity. Alongside this in the literature, debates raged about
the fashion for degrees that were focused on theory to become more vocational
and vice versa. The training vs teaching argument was well worn. With heavily
practical disciplines like GIS (whether it was ever a discipline at all was
another debate entirely) should we be teaching concepts? Should people always
have to learn using ArcGIS? Was a broad spectrum of software important to know?
Were courses simply driving schools for buttonology? The debates were endless
but one thing that characterized them was that rarely did people start from the
last end point or argument. They just started again rather than consider the
wider context. Their own narrow empire was their only concern. They did one
thing very well and that became their very own ivory tower – the pinnacle of
knowledge and learning for others to find and believe in.

Towards the end of my time at Kingston University myself and
colleagues were well travelled, often leading sessions for other lecturers and
academics in the UK on how to teach GIS, or cartography, or mobile mapping
fieldwork. We were seen as leading in both discipline, practice and pedagogy.
We received numerous research grants for developing technical innovations. We
were researching and mapping social media feeds and taking advantage of them in
teaching and learning nearly 10 years ago and helping others devise their own
approaches for instance.

So have things changed?

The mapping landscape has changed profoundly. New software.
New companies or organisations. Free and open data and software. Everything is
quicker with social media feeding an endless daily appetite for something,
anything, that people consume as ‘new’ (which often isn’t but that’s also a
different tale). One person does x, the next responds with y. One person
colours their OpenStreetmap in one fashionable way, another makes a hand-drawn
version and yet another still does some crazy psychedelic trippy animated
thing. All fun in the kiddie’s sandpit but what about outside the sandpit where
the real world of mapping exists; where making a version of a basemap in an arty style actually doesn’t cut it for any practical purpose?

Things haven’t really changed and so the disconnect between
theory, practice and praxis widens. I’ve seen panel discussions at recent
conferences that have opened up the same tired debates, just with different
people ignoring what’s gone before. We’ve largely solved the pedagogic debates
about training vs teaching. It’s out there (in the literature) if one cares to
find it but of course it totally destroys people who want to be seen as
innovators to not be seen to be carefully considering this stuff. The
discussions are repetitive and say more about the naivety of the panelists
rather than their depth of understanding of either their chosen domain or
pedagogy. They love playing in the sandpit but the tantrums start as soon as
someone wants to play more seriously.

What I have observed is that the players involved are very
different to those of 10, 20, 30 and more years ago in terms of the
cartographic domain. Cartography seems to have become a past-time rather than
either an academic subject or a professional vocation. Many involved in making
maps are doing so from a background of education in anything but cartography
yet they’re found a passion for making maps. They want to be seen as makers and
doers and that is sufficient. Most of this is due to the burgeoning
availability of data and the internet as a powerful democratizing tool.
Cartographic technology has shifted so rapidly that it’s hard to conceive of
someone now wanting to take a Bachelors degree in it. It doesn’t conjure up the
image of a real subject any more. It’s been demoted to what a hacker might do
with a couple of spare hours and a Mac Book in Starbucks.

So what courses do people want to study to gain
qualifications in? It’s pretty much anything but cartography because you can
now get your cartography from the internet or from meet-ups or from anywhere but
an institution which is set up to deliver education. But the craziness of this
situation is that many people who now purport to be fine purveyors of map
education sought expert tuition for their own non-cartographic qualifications
at some point. Yet now, they’re shouting loudly about how they are now
best-placed to offer cartographic training. Let’s be clear – I’m happy for
anyone to offer advice and training and help in areas they have some level of
knowledge or expertise in but there’s no substitute to learning from experts –
people who are experienced, have deep domain knowledge and have played beyond
the sand pit. The mantra of beginners for beginners doesn’t cut it. Students in
a Bachelors class being taught by an intern or teaching assistant is no
substitute for the Professor. They have the merit and background to support and
lead learning. They can assess the quality of work against expected norms and
relative work. Not everything is super cool or awesome. Some work is, frankly,
awful and you’re doing people an injustice by telling them simply by taking
part you are becoming proficient or an expert in either domain knowledge or
practical ability. As a lecturer I was happy giving fail grades. I was also
happy giving grades well into the 90% and higher range. The variation was huge.
Not everyone excelled. Some had natural talent, some worked hard to achieve.
Grades reflected ability and outcome. I was only able to understand how to assess
and comment on quality because I knew my subject and knew how to support
teaching and learning through an understanding of pedagogy. By all means go and
enjoy the colouring in with computers at a local meet-up and figure out a
little trick that makes a task easier – but do not be fooled into thinking this
equates to expertise.

And how did this dumbing down of cartographic education and
the rise of kindergarten kartography come about? Because of the admin and
bureaucracy I so hated. The documents, forms and paperwork that we had to
complete to get a new or revised course up and running were horrific. We had to
get industrial reviews. We had to pass the work across many other academic and
practitioner’s desks. We had term reviews, semester reviews, annual reviews,
quinquennial reviews and validation and re-validation events at which external
people would pour over ever small item of our plans to check it and assure
themselves of the standards it sets. That’s how proper education works.
Checking and cross-checking and review after review after review. That was how,
ultimately, we could stand in front of students and know we were delivering top
class content in a modern, stimulating, caring and professional environment.
All of that developmental work gave assurances to the student too. When we
could claim most graduates got jobs in the field on graduation we were not
making vacuous statements. We knew what we were delivering was what industry and
society wanted and needed. We had their buy-in. We were meeting government-set
targets for qualified and able graduates. We also kept pace with developments
to ensure students were at least on the curve if not as much ahead of it as we
could make it. Proper education leading to proper qualifications that were the
student’s license to demonstrate they had a proper qualification in the subject
they studied. A subject that had an avowed intent to marry domain knowledge with
practical skills; to develop knowledge and understanding; a critical and
evaluative approach; and a desire for lifelong learning. But too many people
have become fed up with this requirement as they search for a quick fix. Taking
time to learn something is not seen as a requirement for becoming an expert.
Playing the long game is no longer regarded by many as a wholesome approach to
learning and by many of the current crop of people who claim to offer
educational or training services they do so based on a complete lack of quality
assurance that anyone can rely on.

This is why I find today’s trend for short-form online
learning and meet-ups as being heralded as THE place to learn cartography so
dispiriting. Many of these people seem unaware of so much both in domain
knowledge and pedagogy. They’ve rarely gone through any education or training
in cartography so their badges are from other disciplines yet they now claim to
be the carto-educators of choice. Frankly it’s a tough job to counter that
culture precisely because so many formal courses are no longer offered but it
doesn’t make it right. It simply doesn’t stack up. You can’t want a
qualification from one set of experts then profess to others you’re one in some
other subject. MOOCs, I feel, are a special case and most people seem to avoid
the reality that many are done as loss-leaders to whet people’s appetite and
get them sufficiently interested to take a fee-paying version of the course.
Universities do it. Corporations do it. You hardly see any reading lists any
more either – the ability to use Google seems to be the only requirement for an
inquisitive mind. If content isn’t already online then it’s all too often seen
as irrelevant.

Of course, much of this has to do with the death of
cartography in the classroom. It’s inevitable people seek education from people
offering it and if the traditional arena has dried up then of course motivated
individuals and groups will see a gap in the market they feel they can fill.
And I am part of that problem because I’d had enough of University life and the
crap that got in the way. But I also hope that reaching an audience through
various blogs and by continuing to go to conferences and meetings helps others.
I’m also writing a book…yes, a real, live book to support much more than the
return to button-pushing that current quasi-carto-educators seem to have
returned to (side-note…you know, coding is also just button pushing by a
different form. I don’t care whether you change the colour of a highway using
CSS, javascript or a GUI). And, of course, people love ‘free’ and so free
meetups with free content led by people who don’t charge for their time and
where free pizza or beer is offered as enticement are bound to be a win win.
Except what many don’t seem to realize is it’s a false economy. My suggestion
is do some research and ask around. If you want to know something about
cartography and really want to get an education in it, seek out a professional
who has a background domain and pedagogic knowledge. In the UK I’d look at UCL,
City University, Leicester or Nottingham University. In the US, just go check
out Penn State, University of Madison-Wisconsin or Oregon State University. Of
course, others exist but I’m just picking out a few places to start. Get your
qualifications from relevant experts and not from the market stall purveyors
who are offering knock-off merchandise. It might look like a good deal but it’ll
probably break after a week or two. Get your background in cartography and
don’t see Kindergarten Kartography as a sufficient substitute.

As a final thought I do want to be absolutely clear that I'm happy for everyone to have a go at making maps as I have said numerous times before. I'm also more than happy for people to pass on tips, tricks and nuggets of advice via many different forms. I use this sort of advice and self-learning ever day to supplement what I know and to learn from others. Don't mistake this discussion as some sort of claim that no-one is allowed to utter anything about cartography unless they've put in 40 years and have multiple badges of honour. That would be absurd. There is a place for everyone to contribute to the wider realm of cartographic understanding. It's just that the balance has gone. I feel we've tipped into a dangerous area where people are getting hooked on relatively appealing and accessible fayre masquerading as quality assured content. Get hooked on the good stuff and you'll find it sustains you much further than the local sand pit.

And by the way, next time you're at a conference watching a panel discussion on the topic of Cartographic education just step back and think about whether the panelists really have the chops.

Maps are my passion and my profession. This is my personal cartonerd blog where I offer opinions and critique maps. Serious points with a good dose of British sarcasm. Do not be offended. It's about the maps, not you. Views entirely my own.